Note to Self

 I don't want to make you feel bad, but you have got to stop believing there is no other way.  If you don't think there's anything wrong with the way things are, congratulations, but you're wrong.  You might be sitting pretty-- a few people are-- or you might just need to pry those eyes open and take a look around.  The unrest, the violence, the anger, the bad news-- these aren't just a part of life; they are a sign that something is very very wrong.  We haven't reached the pinnacle of what humans can achieve.  We haven't reached the end of history where we can just coast until the oceans dry and the sun is spent.  We have a long way to go assuming we can survive the next 10 years.  

Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not blaming you (unless you're guilty).  It's not your fault (probably).  My belief (or hope) is that we are stagnant right now because most of us by far are in denial.  We are lied to so constantly -- that in itself is a sign that it ain't right-- and most of us, faced with a barrage of untruths coming at us every waking minute it seems from inescapable channels of communication to which few have access understandably prefer to live as though there must be a reason for us to believe them.  There is a reason! It's so they can continue to do whatever the fuck they want and you'll let them because otherwise it makes no sense that they are running the show.

The barrage is intended to wear us down.  It's intended to overwhelm us so that we crave the safety of being underwhelmed.  Do not burn out, but neither give in.  Above all, invite the truth in.  Let yourself be scared.  Let yourself be astonished at the miracle of your complicity-- and seemingly everyone else's-- in an order that is stacked up against you (and be informed that most of us do not even have the option to believe we are in our station by accident or by the misfortune of our ancestors, that we can overcome our circumstances and re-join the class of lookalike owners to which we rightfully belong).  And then be angry.

There is another way. The first step to being there is knowing to go there.  Then go.

Everybody's a critic

Edward Hopper Truro Kitchen

Years ago, when the internet was young, a debate raged in a particular corner of it over the following, by William Carlos Williams:

This is just to say

I have eaten 

the plums 

that were 

in the icebox 

and which 

you were probably 

saving 

for breakfast 

Forgive me 

they were delicious 

so sweet 

and so cold.

In an online chat, GW, a feature writer for a major newspaper, in an act of deliberate provocation for the benefit of the conversation, asserted offhand that it was not a poem.  It's only one of my favorite poems.  But let's take a peek at the crux of his argument: 

I once heard of an intelligence test with this essay question, asking the test taker to explain, with examples, this statement:  "If you are too openminded, your brains might fall out."  It was an interesting test of people's ability to understand the metaphorical.   Dummies tried to literally explain how openmindedness might result in car accidents in which brain material might... etc.   The smarter the person, the more complex and nuanced the answer.   [A chat participant's] statement [that poetry is in the eyes of the beholder] reminds me of this question.  All things are not open to debate.    "I love you" is not a poem in any context.    This, by Yeats, is a poem in any context: [quotes For Anne Gregory]

I am willing to accept that poems don't have to rhyme.  I am willing to accept that a refrigerator warrantee, placed in a highly ironic context, might be a poem.  (I'm waiting for one, but I can see it.)  But some things you have to read, and say no, or the word "poem" has no meaning at all. That little bit of refrigerator-message nonsense by William Carlos Williams ain't no poem.  

Participants of the chat gamely attempted impromptu rebuttals which the feature writer dismissed out of hand with a determined, self-satisfied obtuseness.  While his assertion was not in that category of opinion or argument that is meant to stand up to scrutiny for any length of time, I don't know (or care) whether he ever came around.  What difference does it make?  If the feature writer managed to win the debate, would bar bets about the taxonomy of the piece waged at taverns across the Anglophone world since its appearance be settled?  Would the heirs of the publishers at Objectivist Press be entitled to restitution from Williams' estate for whatever he was paid for the publication of the 1934 collection in which the poem first appeared?  Would the wall etched with it by Typographer Lucas de Groot at The Hague* need to be razed?  

GW is of course entitled to his opinion-- though his defense of it is poor, rife with obfuscation and misdirection. His preference to authenticate the poetry of Yeats's lovely work over Williams' is of course a diversion, not an argument, and the point he wants to make about literalism is perilously close to a backfire.  Speaking not as an authority, but rather as just some schlub on the internet, I would say that GW's position-- which I can't help but see as an example of the sort of easy posturing that career mouthpieces of the elite like to do from time to time for the benefit of the rubes and contrariness merely for the purpose of incitement and clicks-- is an evasion of one of the questions at the heart of Williams' piece: not "Is it a poem?" but "How is it a poem?"  This is why he does not win the debate.  

"Poems don't have to rhyme" he says.  This poem doesn't merely not rhyme, it has no structure other than the most straightforward English grammar and how it appears on the page.  There is no meter.  The language is plain.  There are no similes or feats of language. It has none of the devices we expect in a poem, no references to anything outside of the moment.  Yet in its imagery and economy of syllables, it is haiku-like†. The son of a painter, Williams painted with words. 

It's odd that of all of WCW's short, formless, monosyllabic imagist poems he could have chosen to dismiss, GW chose this one.  It could be my imagination but to me it’s erotic-- juicy, tactile, tasty.  The simple intimacy of it makes my reading of it feel like something of an accident, an encroachment. 

Taken literally, the moment is vividly captured.  A note is left for someone to find.  (Who?)   The image of the writer coming across plums before breakfast (Last night?  At dawn?) and being unable to resist though he knows they are not his to eat-- forbidden fruit-- the hedonistic gratification he experiences;  then the apology with its gratuitous sensuous evocation of the act itself for the benefit of the aggrieved …  and then leaving!  All that,  conveyed in that seemingly prosaic note; but the image it leaves with me never fails to sear my brain.  A moment immortalized, eternalized in precise, elegant wording; echoed so as to reverberate in the reader's mind. How is it not a poem?

I'm not qualified or eloquent enough to defend the poem for all time, but I did not participate in the discussion at the time, and, though it would have been playing into the feature writer's hand if I had not been able to contain myself, I have never felt good about leaving it there, molested.  

~~~~~~

* Said wall:

Someone didn't get the memo. (Wall poem at Bankastraat, The Hague, Netherlands, 2013. Source: Wikipedia)

† And no, GW and other pedants, I didn't count the syllables in each line. I'm talking about the impact of the haiku, not the form.  

Not Happening

A year ago in the first weeks of seclusion, I was astonished at the rabbit like proliferation of artful black and white commercials with somber piano music that were not commercials but public service announcements -- messages from our sponsor to remind us that whereas everything had changed, nothing had changed.   You might be rationing toilet paper but Charmin had your back in these unprecedented times.  In the first weeks of the crisis when everyone but front line workers were sealed inside their homes, their travel restricted, every car maker wanted you to know that they knew that what you needed now more than ever in these unprecedented times was new transportation and that they were there to make it happen for you.  

While most of us were trying to understand how a new disease on the other side of the world that had infected maybe a few thousand people was a threat, forces behind the scenes were at work on a plan to re-order society which in a matter of weeks they carried out.  While government's response was haphazard, catch as catch can, contradictory, the upheaval to society was swift, coordinated and uniform.  The thoroughness of the response from the owning class freed our elected officials to take whatever tack they fancied as events unfolded-- even unmerited credit for it.  With the crisis handled, the president, in keeping with his brand, was free to clown, to posture and to gaslight about the seriousness of the threat.  Congress meanwhile moved as rapidly as it ever does to ensure that trillions in aid was concocted out of thin air and distributed upward while banking that the crumbs cast to the masses would be met with gratitude.  Were the contradictions ever more heightened?   Your job and your healthcare may have disappeared; the doubtfulness of your future may have moved to the center of your consciousness.  Your sponsor wished you to know that whether you survived this or not, they would still be there at the end of it.  There was no channel you could change to that did not land on the same sad message that due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, we regret to inform you that any semblance of control of your own life is temporarily suspended.  The hand on the remote was still theirs.   

The neoliberal power structure that had ordered me into seclusion never let me forget who was in charge-- flooding the airwaves with propaganda, crushing any chance for universal healthcare to deal with the pandemic.  Suspiciously they preferred to rapidly assume ownership of the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted with the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.  Closer to home, my firm provided free counseling, daily meditations, workshops on how to cope (i,e., remain productive) in the new environment.  The managerials devised clever email challenges and games, opportunities for us to remain engaged, cohered, on the hook.  

As vaccines continue to be made available and are administered to the arms of millions in this country, as Texas jumps the gun and re-opens completely, as my tasks at work in a more cautious part of the world become increasingly centered on the possibility of a return to the office-- not yet assigned a date or even spoken aloud but hinted at with activity requested by administrative departments-- as spirits everywhere around me begin to rise like the shining moon of the vernal equinox and a desire to shake off the confines of our year long winter of isolation begins to ripple through every corner of the continent, my heart sinks.  A year ago while I was coping with the death of my ambitions for Bernie Sanders' candidacy,  I was simultaneously struggling to comprehend how things had changed so quickly, and to wonder what future cataclysms were in store for the ordering of my days.  Not long ago, anything seemed possible.  The vacancy at the top of the executive branch has changed, thanks partly to the contrast the new president promised to be to the old president -- never mind what we have long known about him-- exhilarating contrasts that now that the office has been secured seem one by one to be getting pounded back down into the shape of the monotonous familiar.  Now that we are nearing the denouement of this crisis, are we really just to return to how it was?  

Relativity, Apocalypse and Slapstick with the Fleischers

Some science, fun and prophecy from Max and Dave Fleischer:

The Einstein Theory of Relativity (Max Fleischer, 1923)

Finding his voice (1929)

 

Koko's Earth Control (1928)

Bonus: Ikuo Oishi's Fleischer inspired Ugokie kori no Tatehiki (Fox versus Racoon Dog ) (1933)